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  • The Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre, and: Gender and the London Theatre, 1880–1920
  • Katherine Newey (bio)
The Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre, edited by Kerry Powell; pp. xv + 288. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004, £45.00, £17.99 paper, $75.00, $25.99 paper.
Gender and the London Theatre, 1880–1920, by Margaret D. Stetz; pp. 141. High Wycombe: Rivendale Press, 2004, £30.00, $45.00.

Kerry Powell's Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre brings together some of the best scholars of late-nineteenth-century theatre with a series of accessible and lucid essays that cover both the texts and contexts of the sprawling and multifaceted nineteenth-century theatre. The volume's essays cover the expected—the new drama of the late nineteenth century, the fallen woman, and surveys of the popular genres of the period—as well as derivations of major projects in new areas of theatre history, such as Jim Davis and Victor Emeljanow's work on theatre audiences, Tracy Davis's ground-breaking study of the economics of the Victorian theatre industry, Mary Jean Corbett's provocative readings of actresses' self-fashioning in the light of feminist theories of autobiography, and Powell and Susan Carlson's work on women playwrights of the late nineteenth century.

Within the conventions and restrictions of the Cambridge Companion volume—and surely there are now enough of them to regard the Companion as a distinct genre— Powell offers a selection of essays which, while providing reliable introductions to novices in the field, do not simply retell the old narratives of history. The volume is a useful snapshot of the "New Theatre History" of the last fifteen years: work grounded in materialist approaches to the archive combined with the attention to broader formations of culture and capital and a sensitivity towards theoretical innovations of the late twentieth century. This is theatre history that has shrugged off its rusty tweed jacket or lavender-scented [End Page 129] cardigan to offer robustly argued and theorised accounts of theatre as a significant cultural practice of the nineteenth century. All contributors to this Companion work from an acceptance of the Victorian and Edwardian theatre on its own terms, rather than engaging those lazy old high cultural assumptions about the quality of Victorian theatre.

The essays in this volume are attentive to the double audience of the Companion genre: readers unfamiliar with the field who seek information and certainty, and expert readers who are looking for new ideas. David Mayer's essay on melodrama is an excellent example of the way essays in this volume cater to this double audience. In "Encountering Melodrama," Mayer stages that encounter in two ways, by outlining the enduring elements of a protean genre throughout the nineteenth century, and offering a variety of approaches for the twenty-first-century historian of the form. He aims to provide "less a definition than a working description" to "show how melodrama functions as an essential social and cultural instrument" (145); that is, he examines melodrama as cultural production, not aesthetic object. This distinction and emphasis is one maintained throughout the volume. In this respect, Jacky Bratton's essay "The Music Hall" is exemplary in framing the aesthetic developments of music hall in terms of its social and legal contexts first and foremost. Bratton's essay has a firm grasp of the place of popular entertainment as a Victorian institution as well as the economic and legislative influences on its formation and development. Bratton also offers a fascinating discussion of the physical spaces of music halls and the impact of both the interiors of the halls and their social geographies on performance material and practices.

Indeed, there is much to learn about the practicalities of theatre production in this volume. Russell Jackson's "Victorian and Edwardian Stagecraft" and Michael Pisani's "Music for the Theatre" are packed with information about the practicalities of performance, and their bibliographies will provide readers with a number of starting points for further research. Of particular interest is the way both Jackson and Pisani show how stage settings and theatre music were not simply instrumental or mechanical, but significant in...

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